Happy Thursday!!

I am about to give up on promising any sort of time frame/schedule for my blog posts. I have stuff in my head that I want to write about. Big stuff, good stuff, beer stuff, but life keeps messing with me! Last night I had a rather nasty run-in with a cable box and my foot... gravity and the cable box got the best of me, and now I have a fancy boot and some pills that are making me loopy, so please forgive any overly cheesy comments today.

So, the first matter of business today is Belgian Beer Fest-September 10th in Boston. This is an event hosted by Beer Advocate and something that they are very excited about, as am I. Now I wish very much that I could go, but I don't think I can justify a trip to Boston just yet for beer... though that is one of my long term goals, beer vacations. You can get all sorts of info on BBF right here.

Next on my agenda, the answer(s) to the last Wednesday beer quiz. The question was "As we can pretty safely assume, beer is one of the oldest and most popular beverage in the world. But my question is, what is the most popular beer in the world? Do you know? If you do (or if you are Google savvy enough to find out) let me know"

It turns out that the answer to this question was much more complicated than I anticipated. I thought there would be one or two top beers in the world, but it appears that there are one or two top beers in each country. So here are the statistics that I was able to find:

“Since 2001 the best selling beer in the USA has been Bud Light with an almost 16% share of the total market” One addition to this, I found an interesting article that says Bud Light is no longer the best selling beer in the world, it is now Chinese Snow. Just a warning, the website is in Chinese... and Google translator gives an interesting translation of the site. I now want to try this Snow and see if it is better than Bud Light (my guess is yes it is)

“Canadians rarely pass up a chance to look down their noses at Americans because they feel nearly all their beer is better. Their best selling brand is Labatt Blue.” I didn't realize that I haven't tried Labatt Blue, until just now... adding it to the list to try

“Many people don’t immediately think of beer when they think of Brazil, the fifth most populous country in the world with almost 200 million residents. With almost a third of the total market, the local brand Skol dominates,” Now I want to look for some Brazillian beer!

“Corona is the best selling beer in Mexico, one of the top selling imported beers in the United States and also one of the best selling beers in the world, available in over 150 countries” Meh... I don't really like Corona, so why Dos Equis or some other decent Mexican beer isn't number one confounds me, just like Bud Light being the top selling beer... must be a cost thing.

"A few huge companies dominate the German beer market, with Krombacher taking the crown as the single top brand, followed by Bitburger, Warsteiner, and Becks, which is by far the most exported German beer." I like Krombacher and I like Becks, so I can see how these can be top choices for a country known for beer, amoungst other things

I got all this information from Beer Innovation and cannot vouch that it is the MOST accurate information out there, but it seems pretty kosher to me.

It feels good to have two posts under my belt this week! I am feeling so silly (probably from painkillers) that I found some fun beer pictures to share with you. Enjoy!

No quiz for this week... I have a request for help. You see, I am shy... and I want to write a letter introducing my blog to some larger breweries, but I am afraid that I will get carried away gushing with my love of this beer or that beer and lose all sense of professionalism (the little that I have). So, at your convenience, please send me some ideas on what to write. You can send your super awesome emails to Sarah@hoppybeergirl.com yep, that is an email at my domain... Yes, that means that I am dedicating this week to finally getting it back up and working (I hope).

Looks like I just added a bunch more to my "To Drink" list.